Starts with a ‘T’

• Like, isn’t it strange how national boundaries melt away in the face of geographical ones?

• Like, isn’t it strange that India now finds itself as a part of Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, bonded in common grief and loss?

• Like, doesn’t it sometimes feel that we are all collectively walking on an eggshell called the universe?

• Like, isn’t it curious how numbers have lost their power now that death tolls came in their tens of thousands?

• Like, isn’t it funny how ‘weather’ has started having a lot of ‘whether’ about it of late?

• Like, isn’t it curious how green grass is now sprouting on regions that was once permanently under ice — and snow now falls in Dubai’s lap?

• Like, doesn’t the experience of the tsunami change forever our perception of that postcard blue, limitless expanse known as the sea?

• Like, isn’t it time that we re-discovered the laws of science and put it to use in our lives?

• Like, isn’t it funny that last Sunday’s tsunami turned out to be a gigantic lesson in the old scientific observation that nature abhors a vacuum?

• Like, isn’t it strange that of all the democracies of the world, the oldest and strongest one is the democracy of death, which pronounces that all men, women and children are perfectly equal?

• Like, isn’t is true that of all our possessions, it is our children who are our most valued?

• Like, isn’t the loss of children a bit like losing our future?

• Like, isn’t it sad that the tsunami has left tens of thousands of children without parents and tens of thousands of parents without children?

• Like, isn’t it strange that this same time last year the parents of Bam were searching for their dead children in the earthquake’s rubble and the children of Bam were crying for their lost parents?

• Like, isn’t it funny how unexpected are the ways of the weather and how expected are the ways of our forecasters?

• Like, is it really fair to expect our Met department to predict the onset of the tsunami when it sometimes finds it difficult to decide whether it will rain in Delhi or not?

• Like, is it reasonable to expect our forecasters to be on full alert all 24 hours of the day, everyday of the week?

• Like, shouldn’t tsunamis and cyclones and earthquakes follow government working hours strictly before they strike? I mean, shouldn’t Sunday’s tsunami have waited for Monday and got a proper appointment from our officials before deciding to visit Cuddalore?

• Like, aren’t there as many opinions to manage this crisis as there are experts?

• Like, doesn’t India have an awful lot of experts and therefore an awful lot of opinions on how to manage the crisis?

• Like, isn’t it interesting that while we get no warning about the real tsunami, we are inundated by false warnings ever since it struck, keeping an entire coastline of 7,000 km in a state of perpetual panic?

• Like, isn’t it intriguing that the government is at its most efficient about alerting people when a tsunami prediction turns out to be a false alarm?

• Like, doesn’t the mass panic that follows a false tsunami alert demonstrate how the fear of death is worse than death itself?

• Like, all said and done, while governments and organisations like the UN bestir themselves, won’t it be the boundless capacity of ordinary people to reach out to each other that will see the world through this crisis?

• Like, isn’t it our capacity to feel this tragedy in our veins, even if we have not experienced it for ourselves, that will ultimately provide the basis to recover from it?